The American State of Cuba: The Business of Cuba and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1797 – 1825 By Stephen Chambers A.M., Brown University, 2008 A.B., The University of Chicago, 2002 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2013 © Copyright 2013 by Stephen Chambers ii This dissertation by Stephen Chambers is accepted in its present form by the Department of History as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date__________ __________________________________ Seth Rockman, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date__________ __________________________________ Michael Vorenberg, Reader Date__________ ___________________________________ James Green, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date__________ ___________________________________ Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii VITA Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Stephen Chambers received his AB from The University of Chicago and his AM from Brown University. He has professionally published with major presses and periodicals in the United States and abroad. His original scholarship has appeared in The New England Quarterly, The Journal of Rethinking History, and The Journal of the Early Republic. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a debt of gratitude to a great many people who made this project possible. First, thanks are due to my advisor and friend, Seth Rockman. This work has benefited enormously from his thoughtful critiques. Throughout my graduate career at Brown (and indeed, even before I arrived), Seth’s mentorship proved invaluable. I would like to thank Jim Green, who has been a trusted colleague since my first semester at Brown. Thanks also to Mike Vorenberg, whose comments and suggestions more than once helped give me the confidence to complete this project. At Brown, a heartfelt thank you to the following members of the faculty (past and present) who have provided guidance and support along the way: Joan Richards, Karl Jacoby, Tara Nummedal, Vazira Zamindar, Elliot Gorn, Douglas Cope, Jorge Flores, Amy Remensnyder, and Ethan Pollock. During my time at Brown, my colleagues (past and present) have been a great source of support and inspiration. In particular, I’d like to thank Michelle Mericle, Danny Loss, Sonja Glaab, Bryan Knapp, Jon Gentry, Will Brucher, Sara Fingal, and Theresa Williams. Thanks also to the numerous participants at the 2011 Slavery’s Capitalism conference, where I presented a draft selection from this project. And I would be remiss if I did not thank the tireless staff at the Brown University History department: Cherrie Guerzon, Mary Beth Bryson, and Julissa Bautista. The knowledgeable staff and archivists at numerous institutions were instrumental in making this possible. In particular, I would like to begin by thanking the the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Bristol Historical Society, the John Hay Library and v Rockefeller Library at Brown University, and the John Carter Brown Library. Further north, I’d like to thank the staff of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Baker Library at Harvard Business School, the National Archives and Records Administration in Waltham, the Phillips Library, Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, and the New Hampshire Historical Society. Down the coast, I owe thanks to institutions from New Haven to Miami: the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the New York Public Library, the U.S. National Archives and Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and to the staff of the Cuban Heritage Collection (with their amazing reading room) at The University of Miami. Thanks also to the staff at the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky. For the Cuba leg of this project, I owe deep gratitude to Adrian Lopez-Denis and Evelyn Perez, without whom this simply would not have been possible. Special thanks also to the staff at the Archivo Nacional de Cuba and at the Rare Books Collection at the University of Havana Library. This project has benefited from the generous support of Brown University, The John Carter Brown Library, The Filson Historical Society, and The Cuban Heritage Collection at The University of Miami. Overdue thanks are due to my family, for all of their constant support, including my parents and younger brother. Most of all, however, thank you to my children, Ellie and William, and to my patient wife, Ceceley: this is dedicated to you. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: From Port to Plenty 1 CHAPTER ONE: Sailing for a Deeper South: Americans in Cuba, 1797 – 1809 30 CHAPTER TWO: ‘No God But Gain’: The U.S. – Cuba – Baltic Circuit 79 and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1809 – 1814 CHAPTER THREE: From Outpost to Informal Empire: U.S. Trade 131 and Foreign Policy in Cuba, 1815 – 1825 CHAPTER FOUR: Slavery’s Navy: Power and Profit, 1815 – 1825 186 CONCLUSION: The American State of Cuba 234 Appendix: Tables and Figures 252 Bibliography 267 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Port of Ownership of U.S. Ships at Archangel, 1810. Figure 2. Sample of United States Ships in the Baltic, 1811. Figure 3. New England Foreign Entrances, 1810 – 1811. Figure 4.1. Top Foreign Ports of Entry: Boston, 1810 – 1811. Figure 4.2. Top Foreign Port Clearances: Boston, 1810 – 1811. Figure 5. Marine Insurance Premiums: Boston, 1811. Figure 6.1. United States Sugar Imports by Source: October 1, 1820 – September 30, 1821. Figure 6.2. United States Coffee Imports by Source: October 1, 1820 – September 30, 1821. Figure 7. Share of United States Clearances By Region: October 1, 1820 – September 30, 1821. Figure 8.1. Nationality of Ship Entrances: Havana, 1820 – 1823. Figure 8.2. Nationality of Ship Clearances: Havana, 1820 – 1823. Figure 9.1. Top United States Ports of Entry: Havana, 1820 – 1823. Figure 9.2. Top United States Port Clearances: Havana, 1820 – 1823. Figure 10. Sources of Gold and Silver Coins Imported into the United States from October 1, 1820 – September 30, 1821. Figure 11. Identities of New York Settlers bound for Moa, Cuba, November 1826. viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AAS American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. AGI Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain. ANC Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Havana, Cuba. ASP-C&N American State Papers, Commerce and Navigation. ASP-Fi American State Papers, Finance. ASP-FR American State Papers, Foreign Relations. ASP-NA American State Papers, Naval Affairs. BHS Bristol Historical Society, Bristol, RI. CHC Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami, Miami, FL. DNA National Archives, Washington, D.C. FHS Filson Historical Society, Louisville, KY. HAY John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, RI. HBS Baker Library, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA. HFA Harvard University Fine Arts Library, Cambridge, MA. JCB John Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI. LOC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. LSU Special Collections, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA MHS Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA. NARA-MA National Archives and Records Administration, Waltham, MA. NHHS New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, NH. NYPL Special Collections, New York Public Library, New York, NY NYHS New York Historical Society, New York, NY PEM Phillips Library, Peabody-Essex Museum, Salem, MA. RIHS Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, RI. UHL University of Havana, Rare Books Library, Havana, Cuba. Yale Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT. ix INTRODUCTION: From Port to Plenty Abiel Abbot stepped out of the Havana street into a merchant’s business office. An attendant, likely an enslaved African, carried Abbot’s luggage, along with mementos of his time in Cuba – a jar of scorpions, a box of oranges, and his spare black hat – into private quarters that were “as cool as the mango alleys” of the coffee and sugar plantations he had left at 4 AM that morning. After spending nearly four months on the island in an attempt to alleviate a cough that had plagued him for the past eleven years, Abbot was ready to return to his home and congregation in Massachusetts.1 During his time in the Spanish colony in the winter of 1828, Abiel Abbot documented his travels in a series of letters, posted back to New England, in which he reflected on Cuban Catholicism, slavery, and commerce. From start to finish, he was escorted through the Spanish island by Americans. In February 1828, he had arrived, not at Havana, but at the heavily American port of Matanzas, sixty miles to the east, where he was received by the Massachusetts native George Bartlett, who hosted Abbot on his La Carolina coffee plantation. And in May 1828, he left three adjoining coffee/sugar plantations, Reserva, Fundador, and Pequena Cabana, all of which were owned by another Bostonian, Nathaniel Fellowes. At 4:00 AM, Fellowes had woken “in his night gown” to watch Abbot climb into a Spanish volante for a bumpy carriage ride to Havana. Once Abbot reached the busy Cuban port, 1 Abiel Abbot, Letters Written in the Interior of Cuba (Boston: Bowles and Dearborn, 1829), 231. 1 the New England minister was eager to get out of the street and into the offices of “Mr. G” – possibly the influential American slave trader and vice consul, Vincent Gray – for fear of assassins. Typically, scholars have presented this collection of correspondence as representative of the origin of nineteenth-century American involvement in Cuba. Yet, on visits to numerous American-owned Cuban plantations and merchant houses, Abiel Abbot consistently acknowledged the extensive investment of United States citizens in the Spanish colony: by 1828, Americans had been in Cuba for years. While New Englanders were perhaps over-represented in Abbot’s circle of American contacts in Cuba, the American plantation-owners and merchants in the Spanish colony at the time of his visit hailed from virtually every major United States port. Northerners, however, wielded an outsized influence on the island and were untroubled by the brutality of the Cuban slave regime or the flourishing, outlawed slave trade on which it depended.